


There Lurk No Claws

by jinlinli



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Amnesia, Bucky and Natasha are sent to kill each other, Cold War, F/M, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-12
Updated: 2018-02-12
Packaged: 2019-03-17 10:59:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13657641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jinlinli/pseuds/jinlinli
Summary: A target with too valuable information. Secrets that could derail his organization’s carefully laid plans. They couldn’t afford to allow even the slightest vulnerability. And they only had an extremely narrow window of time to eliminate the target. Less than a handful of minutes spent out in the open gardens before she entered the museum. The terrain was too open and exposed for a clean exit after a short-range kill. This was an opportunity only a sniper could capitalize on.She'd crafted a persona that his organization couldn’t ignore. A mission which he alone could complete. The clean professionalism of the whole setup indicates experience at jobs of this type. She isn’t merely an operative from a rival agency. She’s an operative who specializes in hunting her own kind, and he’s her next mark. The woman turns toward him and flashes a knowing smile. The Soldier is off the roof and running in a bare fifteen seconds.





	There Lurk No Claws

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DrowningByDegrees](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrowningByDegrees/gifts).



> I would like to thank [Rachel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrowningByDegrees/pseuds/DrowningByDegrees)for bidding on me for my short fic offering for Fandom Trumps Hate! You're a wonderful person, and I wanted to write something you'd really love <3 I really enjoyed getting the excuse to dig into a story about these two. We've talked endlessly about our love for Buckynat, and God, I'm so glad to finally bring the fruits of it into the world <3 <3 This ship could always use a little more lovin' and I'm more than happy to give them that! This was such a joy to write :D I hope you like it, Rachel!
> 
> And thank you to [Gerry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/obsessivereader/pseuds/obsessivereader)for helping me sort out some canonical muddiness issues I was having with this fic! I struggled a bit with it, but this fic is so much stronger now that we've managed to sort everything out. You're a truly amazing beta, and I'm blessed every time you share your critiques on one of my fic. Thank you!

1983

The Soldier’s more exposed than he would like to be here. Beside him, a statue stares out over the gardens with blind marble eyes. It’s his only source of cover but it serves his purposes well enough. Here, he can fire unobstructed at any point in the gardens. The target has an eye for art, the file said. She’ll be in Vienna for four days. The target is a paranoid one, so there aren’t many places she is guaranteed to visit. Even fewer are places that are vulnerable to potential assassinations.

The Belvedere presents an opportunity. The target can’t leave Vienna without coming here. There’s a painting of a Kiss here. A woman’s head tilted back, flowers in her red hair, as a dark-haired man presses his lips onto her cheek. They stand in a field of gold. The Soldier doesn’t understand the appeal, but the target will surely come here to see it.

There are two sections of the museum on opposite ends of a long garden. It’s hundreds of yards of exposed terrain. No trees or large structures to interrupt his sight lines. There are several statues and a gently inclined slope which may block his shot if he times it incorrectly, but in truth, the conditions are ideal for a sniper. He shifts uneasily. 

Even the escape routes available to him are highly optimal. The museum is in the heart of Vienna itself. There’s only a tree line and a fence between himself and the city proper. He can lose pursuers easily amidst the crowds. It’s rare that his exit strategies are this straight-forward. No matter how he looks at it, the parameters of this mission are nearly perfect. Almost as if it was designed specifically for him.

He flexes his hands—first the right, then the left—getting his circulation flowing again. Tensed muscles increase the probability of botched shots. His left hand is especially prone to stiffening up after a particularly nasty injury during a mission in Germany. The Soldier settles back into position and sights the target during a sweep of the crowd. Five foot three inches. The muscled legs imply a dancer’s background. Red hair cut short and practical. The sense of uneasiness grows the more he studies her.

She is noticeably unremarkable. No camera, no water bottle, no sunglasses—she lacks the hallmarks of a tourist. Not the studied polish of an academic nor the local’s casual ease. She could be any one of these characters or none of them. It’s the careful neutrality of her bearing and attire—pragmatic, bland, designed for ease of movement. She is something else entirely.

This was not in the file. The target was supposed to be an adjunct to a minor Russian politician involved in a brewing coup. She’d overheard his plans and fled to Vienna to meet a contact who would help her go into hiding. A logical move for someone in her situation. Austria is ostensibly neutral, but the country’s ties to the Western Bloc are well-known even to USSR civilians. 

But this woman is too at ease with herself. A breed of calm that the Soldier recognizes well. It’s the ruthless self-control of one who’s had the fear systematically stripped out of them. This is not the terrified secretary caught in a war larger than herself. The Soldier remembers that Vienna is also neutral ground. A battlefield for intelligence operatives to wage their wars.

He shifts back from the edge of the roof and further into the statue’s shadow. Slowly. Carefully. The eye is drawn to movement where there should be none. He keeps the long barrel of his M82 out of the sun. He doesn’t need a flash of light on metal to expose his position. She has not sighted him yet. 

The Soldier studies her, attempting to determine which agency she’s attached to. From this distance, he can only make out the outline of a handgun tucked under her jacket. She carries no bags, so all of her weapons will need to be kept on her person. Small unnoticeable weapons. Knives most likely. Garrotes, batons, doses of poison also likely. Some organizations favor electroshock weapons to incapacitate enemies. It will be a short-range arsenal. He cannot let her get within range.

She pauses next to a fountain populated by marble sirens wrenching a monster’s mouth open as it writhes in their grip. It’s a perfect shot. She stands completely still with nothing blocking his way. It’s within range but far enough away that he has time to slip away before security can discern the bullet’s path. The Soldier doesn’t fire.

A target with too valuable information. Secrets that could derail his organization’s carefully laid plans. They couldn’t afford to allow even the slightest vulnerability. And they only had an extremely narrow window of time to eliminate the target. Less than a handful of minutes spent out in the open gardens before she entered the museum. The terrain was too open and exposed for a clean exit after a short-range kill. This was an opportunity only a sniper could capitalize on. 

She had crafted a persona that his organization couldn’t ignore. A mission which he alone could complete. The clean professionalism of the whole setup indicates experience at jobs of this type. She isn’t merely an operative from a rival agency. She’s an operative who specializes in hunting her own kind, and he’s her next mark. The woman turns toward him and flashes a knowing smile. The Soldier is off the roof and running in a bare fifteen seconds. 

The Soldier vaults over the fence and onto the sidewalk bordering the Belvedere grounds. A few pedestrians shy away from him as he lands. He’s quick to ease himself into the crowds of pedestrians walking to and from the tram stop across the street. The nearest safe houses are south of the museum less than a kilometer away. The Soldier heads north.

It’s best for him to be in high density areas. Harder to pick out a single person in a crowd of hundreds. Easier for a knife to slip past his guard and between his ribs, but she has to catch him first. He ducks into cafes and out the back doors. Doubles back on his path, weaving haphazardly through streets and alleyways, steadily making his way north. The museum quarter is full of movement and noise. He slips past a pink-skinned couple commenting loudly on the architecture. There’s no telltale flash of red hair behind him. 

The Soldier doesn’t relax his guard. He’d abandoned his M82 rifle when he fled. He’s only armed with his SIG and four knives because it was supposed to be a simple op. A single long-range shot. A quick in and out. There’d been no indication of potential complications. He can’t help but admire her meticulous precision in luring him into the ambush. Now he’s forced to play on the same field as her, one where she clearly holds the upper hand. 

After ducking in and out of the crowd for another ten minutes, he begins to make his way east. The entrance to a defunct bases is about six kilometers east of here. Most of it had collapsed after he’d detonated the charges, but enough of it is intact for him to lay low there for a few days. The Soldier doesn’t know how much information she’s extracted from his agency. It’s safer to assume that his own safe houses are compromised.

The bridge crossing the Danube accommodates both pedestrians and vehicles. The rumble of the cars overhead and the press of foot traffic around him heightens his unease. This bridge is a chokepoint with no easy escape routes if he’s ambushed. He could jump over the railing and into the river, but that would dampen all the gunpowder in his SIG’s cartridge, leaving him with no firearm. And she could always attack him again the moment he reaches the riverbank. The Soldier can only move swiftly across the bridge and hope she doesn’t catch him here. 

But the crossing goes without incident, and he slowly lowers his guard. He’s only a few blocks from the underground base’s entry point—a service tunnel door tucked in the outskirts around Donau Park. He passes through an open plaza and ignores the phantom sense of eyes prickling on his neck. She hasn’t followed him here. He would’ve seen her if she’d been behind him on the bridge. Finally, the Soldier slips into the shelter of the underground base. He lets out a breath.

The Soldier jerks. A bullet clips his shoulder. He belatedly notes the muzzle flash and the muted pulse of a silenced pistol. The Soldier has survived thousands of brushes with death. If he hadn’t had that battle-honed instinct, he would’ve died right there. She’d been going for the kill. He dives forward, flicking his tactical knife out of its sleeve. She’s on him in an instant. He catches a glimpse of two taser disks in her palm, and he drives his knife forward. She ducks back. Strikes again. 

There’s no room to maneuver, nowhere to retreat. He’s trapped close-quarters with an expert in short-range combat. The Soldier drives his fist forward, leveraging his longer reach to his advantage. She leaps. Her legs close around his neck. Air supply cut off. She swings herself onto his shoulders and slams her arms down onto his head. 

Her long sleeves hid the enforced gauntlets on her wrists. The Soldier reels back, slamming her into the wall. The knife is still in his hand. He plunges it into her right thigh. She gasps, releases him. He stumbles against the wall and heaves in a breath. For a moment, they regroup.

The Soldier studies the woman. The Soldier has taken down difficult targets before, but none quite like this. He flexes his hand. His stance widens. Her eyes dart up to meet his, and for a moment, he sees a flicker of—it could almost be called an emotion. 

He darts forward. The woman is injured. He holds the upper hand now. She slips under his guard and snaps her elbow snaps into his ribs, and he gasps as he feels bone crack. The Soldier falls to his knees, slings his Gerber knife forward. The blade glances off of her gauntlet. He blocks an overhand blow with his left arm.

The fight goes on like this. The woman’s training is almost on par with his own, making the battle a long brutal thing. A handler once said that he fought like a starving animal in a cage fight. Finesse only exists in him when he’s behind the sniper scope. But the woman is a slender knife slipping in and out of his guard. The duelist to his brawler. They couldn’t be more different.

However, there are instances where they almost seem to mirror each other. The efficient flip of her knife as she adjusts her grip. The angle of her body mid-strike. There are traces of his movements in her techniques—his physicality repurposed for a lighter, more compact body. The Soldier can see the moments when she notices it too. Her eyes widening subtly, the minute hesitations, the slight adjustments to her strikes. The exchange of blows takes on a distinct rhythm. Almost a dance.

The woman leaps back, and when the Soldier moves to pursue her, she fires an electroshock charge from her gauntlet into his chest. He collapses to the floor. They stare at each other. There’s blood smeared across her forehead. Her eye is swelling with the beginnings of a bruise.

"Who are you?" the woman demands. "Why do I know you?"

The Soldier doesn’t answer. "You’re familiar. I’ve never met you, but you’re familiar. You fight like me.”

He does, or perhaps she fights like him. He knows that at some point, he’d been stationed in Eastern Europe, and her alias had been Russian. Perhaps their organizations had been allies once. Perhaps enemies.

He still can’t control his muscles, but the woman is too agitated to take advantage of it. "Who trained you? Who told you our secrets?"

"No one."

His organization must’ve come into contact with hers at some point, but the Soldier doesn’t remember it. That doesn’t mean much however. For decades, all vulnerable information has been carefully excised from his mind. Even the name of his own organization is too dangerous to be left in the thoughts of a field agent. 

There is a restlessness to the woman. Anyone else would be pacing back and forth, but both her injury and her training don’t allow it. Her breathing is slow and measured—carefully controlled. She won’t bandage her wound in front of a known hostile, he knows. The blood loss will severely limit her abilities soon if it hasn’t already. She will either have to overpower the Soldier now or retreat. 

She searches the Soldier’s face for something familiar, but he knows she’ll find nothing. Even if they did know each other at some point, the handlers have always been careful to eliminate memories of faces first. For a moment, her blank mask gives way to something hinting at frustration and confusion and—longing.

"You’re like me," the woman says.

"Yes."

She looks him in the eye as she begins to back away. It’s not a retreat but rather a ceasefire. An offer of peace. Neither of them look away until she disappears around a corner, leaving the Soldier alone.

 

* * *

 

2018

The handlers never could quite remove all of her from his mind. They’ve been perfecting their memory altering serums for decades. It’s an extremely precise but minimally invasive procedure—nothing like the blunt force electroshock techniques still used by other agencies. But it’s not infallible. Over the years, the Soldier has learned to hold on to the memories worth keeping. Those are few and far between, and for reasons he can never quite articulate, the woman is one such memory.

He doesn’t know why he’s thinking of her now. The Soldier hasn’t thought of these things in decades. He’s not a creature of sentiment. 

The Soldier leans against the brick wall of the alley and breathes out slowly. He is getting on in years now. He’s been in this business since he was a young man, but the decades are catching up to him. The hurts and aches of every mission stick around longer than they used to. His handlers are bald-cheeked and fresh-faced. The Soldier is not a young man anymore.

This mission had been mostly successful. He’d eliminated the target with minimal complications and in less time than the allotted two weeks. The Soldier had been awaiting extraction when the target’s brother found him. Early twenties, untrained, but highly adept with makeshift knives. The Soldier presses a hand into his side. It’s already bleeding through his rushed bandage job. It’s the kind of injury that will require more extensive treatment. Perhaps the handlers may decide to decommission him rather than waste the effort on an asset that’s long outlived his usefulness.

The Soldier has never taken pride in his work, but it smarts that it may be a man two decades his junior who’ll finally take him down. He pushes away from the wall and slowly makes his way out of the alley. The heat and noise of Prague draws him into its fold. His pursuer is not a skilled tracker, but he’s a born local. He’ll find the Soldier if he doesn’t get out of the city quickly.

He begins to limp his way South. There’s a supply drop in a village called Dolní Břežany just outside the outskirts of the city. Even if he doesn’t make it all the way there, the Soldier doubts that his pursuer will be familiar with the outer districts of Prague. The tourist districts have always been the most intimately familiar to pickpockets, he knows. They’ll be on more even footing the further he gets from the center of the city. 

It had been an unusual mission. He had been ordered to eliminate the target without firearms. As handlers come and go, they understand less and less how to use the Soldier to his maximum effectiveness. It’d been a clean kill nonetheless. He’d made sure of it. 

He thinks of the slow-seeping wound in his abdomen. He still doesn’t know how the target’s brother tracked him down. The Soldier has always been thorough and efficient, but he must’ve missed something. The target had caught sight of him before he could successfully complete his mission. His instincts are dulling.

By the time he reaches the furthest reaches of Prague, the sun is beginning to sink below the horizon. The Soldier is barely able to stay on his feet, and he knows that even if his pursuer never finds him, extraction won’t arrive in time. The Soldier is dying. 

He stops in a muddy field and slowly sinks to the ground. It’s another couple of kilometers before he can take refuge in the relative shelter of Dolní Břežany’s resupply point. He’d only made it as far Točná. This field is too exposed, too public. Every ounce of his training and experience urges him to find a more defensible position, but he doesn’t have the strength left for it. The Soldier exhales quietly and lets his head rest against the ground, settling in to wait.

It doesn’t take long before a man steps off the road running adjacent to the field, and the Soldier recognizes him. The box cutter knife is still gripped in his hand. The brother doesn’t look triumphant or elated as he walks over. Instead, his face is set with an expression of grim determination. The Soldier watches his approach silently. 

The brother comes to a halt just in front of him, and for a long time, he just stands over the Soldier. His grip on the box cutter tenses and flexes as they stare at each other. He’s shaking, and the Soldier sees just how young he is. He’s barely settled into adulthood, and here he’s about to kill a man. The Soldier doesn’t regret. Not exactly. There’s no room left in him for remorse. If he lets himself feel it now, he knows he’ll never be able to close that door again. But he supposes this is a fitting end. The target had been a good man. The target’s brother is one too. But the Soldier hasn’t been a good man in a very long time. 

The brother jerks and lurches forward, and the Soldier doesn’t close his eyes. He sees his eyes widen as his knees give out under him and he slumps to the ground. The box cutter slips out of his hand and lands in the mud. For a moment, they both lie side by side in complete silence. The Soldier heard no gunshot, and the man is still breathing. A tranquilizer dart.

Slowly he pulls himself upright and looks around. The woman stands at the edge of the field, a slim pistol gripped in her hand. It’s somehow fitting, the Soldier thinks, that she would appear before him now. She walks to his side swiftly and begins to assess his injuries. 

“Single stab wound,” the Soldier says, inclining his head at the injury. “Right side. Below the ribs. No major organs or arteries damaged.”

“It’s gone untreated for—”

“A while.”

The woman kneels beside the Soldier and gently prods the area around the wound. The bandages binding his torso are soaked through. His breathing is shallow. The inside of his head feels murky and detached. A distant part of him acknowledges that he has little time left.

“I have a car not far from here,” she says. There’s a thin line between her eyes, but her expression is otherwise blank. 

“So you haven’t come to kill me.”

The woman doesn’t answer. She levers him up onto his feet, his weight leaning heavily against her side. “Let’s go,” she says. 

They walk step by step into the village proper. The roads are quiet. The Soldier studies the woman as they make their slow painful progress. Each street light they pass under casts her face in stark shadow. There are folds around her mouth. Her cheeks are slightly sunken in, and her eyes are more deep-set. This is the one part of her that he doesn’t remember. 

There’s a slight limping gait to the woman’s walk. A stiffness in her right leg from an old injury that never quite healed correctly. The Soldier’s hand brushes against her thigh where he’d stabbed his knife in years ago. He can’t see or feel the knot of scar tissue underneath the reinforced cloth, but he knows it’s there.

“You’ve retired.” No agency would let an operative out in the field with an injury slowing them down like this. Something curls in his throat. “Operatives in our line of work don’t typically retire.” 

“Well, I did,” the woman says and nothing else.

They’re on the outskirts of Točná village now, approaching a nondescript van parked on the side of the road. The woman opens the rear door and eases the Soldier onto the backseats. “I can close the wound up now,” she says. “But there’s nothing I can do about the blood loss with the supplies I have on hand.”

The Soldier nods. The woman rifles through a field medical kit. Neither of them speaks when she cuts opens his tac suit and administers anesthetic. The wound had started bleeding again during the walk over. 

“Why did you come looking for me?” he asks.

“You know who I am. How did you recognize me?” the woman says instead of answering. “I know how thorough your handlers are. You shouldn’t have been able to remember my face.”

“I didn’t. I didn’t know what your face looked like for a very long time, but I also didn’t forget who you were.”

The woman looks down and begins to stitch the wound closed. There’s a tightness in her cheeks. A crack in her customary blank facade. “I’ve always wondered if we’d—” she says quietly, “if we knew each other. Before I was assigned to kill you.”

“I don’t know. Maybe we did,” the Soldier says. “I don’t remember anything before my first mission.”

“I don’t either, but you’re familiar. I know you.”

The Soldier looks at the woman. He’d held onto her for so many years, never quite knowing why. He hadn’t thought of her often, but he never forgot her either. The guarded stance, the lethality of her movements, and that single instant of vulnerability when she’d asked him who he was. 

He doesn’t remember the expression on her face back then, but he knows it was different from the one now. There’s fervor in her that’d been kept carefully tamped down before. The carefully constructed blankness is gone. That vulnerability again. It’s a tactic commonly used by deep cover operatives—becoming exactly what her target needs her to be.

“You never told me why you came here,” the Soldier says.

She pauses, her hand partially splayed against his abdomen. “I was looking for something familiar—someone who understood.”

“No,” he says. “Neither of us could ever afford to indulge in sentimentality. Why are you really here?”

“Maybe I have gotten a little sentimental in my old age,” she says. “I came here to kill the Soldier. He died in an empty field between Prague and Točná village. His body will never be recovered.” The woman cuts the thread and inspects her handiwork. The line of stitches is neat and professional. “Six years ago, a Russian female operative disappeared during a firefight in Budapest. Her body was never found. She’s presumed dead.”

And then the Soldier understands. “People like us aren’t allowed to retire."

The woman closes the medical kit and stows it under the seat before sliding into the front seat of the van. The engine rumbles when she starts the ignition. “I haven’t been an operative in a long time. Now, I’m just a civilian with a home and a job and a name.”

“A name?”

She isn’t facing him but he can see the corner of her mouth twitching into an almost smile. A vulnerability, but this time, it doesn’t seem calculated. “Yes, a name. Natasha Romanoff.”

“Natasha,” the Soldier repeats. “Is that your—?”

“No, I don’t know who I was before all this.” Her back straightens and her shoulders square. “I chose the name for myself.”

For a long time, he watches the scenery as she drives. Dolní Břežany passes by. The innocuous off-white building where the supply drop is hidden recedes behind them. The sound of the van’s tires on asphalt is oddly soothing. He doesn’t even know if he wholly trusts her, but he wants to. He wants to believe the story she told him. So he does. He lets himself enjoy the idea of being a man with a name. 

“I think I’d like to be a James,” he says. 

“James it is,” Natasha says, and she’s smiling, full and genuine. James smiles back. 

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked the fic, stop by for a chat on my [tumblr](http://jinlinli.tumblr.com/)!


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